MacBook Pro 13inch 2.26GHz/2GB/160GB/GeForce 9400M/SD

MR Victor

at 11:17 pm

Having never owned a Mac before I was immediately impressed when I saw the price of this entry-level MacBook Pro. I upgraded to 4GB of RAM which I know was no-doubt helpful. The laptop itself is absolutely outstanding!

The Screen – Owning both a 9-inch netbook and a 15-inch full laptop, I knew I wanted something in between and 13″ happened to be the sweet spot. Before it arrived I thought it was going to be a bit too small but as it turns out it is just the right size. The edge-to-edge glass is great for cleaning although it does reflect a lot but you will soon learn automatically how to position the screen depending on the light source around you. The brightness is perfect and can go from relatively dark to extremely bright so is great for all light conditions.

iSight Camera – This is the integrated webcam and it plays one of the most important jobs in my opinion. Not only is it a webcam for your Internet video chat but it also is an ambient sensor which means that it will constantly detect the light around you and brighten and dim the screen and do the same for the keyboard. You won’t notice it happening but when you do think about it, it is amazing. The quality of the iSight is sufficiently good for YouTube though it is by no means amazing – you could get away with some video podcasting with it.

The keyboard – This is yet another part of the computer which I had never paid any attention to before – because a keyboard is just a keyboard right? Well actually, this keyboard is amazing to type on – the spacing between the letters is just perfect, it is the right size and has function keys for just about anything you would need. If you use “windows” you’ll no doubt notice a few new symbols and the Windows key has disappeared. The best thing about this keyboard is that it is backlit meaning that in conjunction with the iSight camera, it automatically figure out the right amount of light for your keyboard and makes typing so much easier. It will also save your eyes when typing in bright light or in the dark.

The trackpad – Another innovation for me – it feels amazing – it is made out of a specially coated glass where your fingers glide across (not scrape across like other laptops), there are no buttons and in fact the whole trackpad is a button – press down anywhere to click. The gestures are fantastic too – scroll by swiping two fingers downwards, four fingers down launches expose where you can see all your open windows and there’s much more to do. It will become natural in a day or two of using it.

Software – Mac OS X is included which is no doubt, in my opinion at least, hundreds of times superior to Windows. The Mac comes with loads of free software including the iLife suite which include everything from website building tools to music making and professional video editing tools. There are programs which allow you to take photos and even create a greenscreen style effect with just any coloured wall behind you. The Mac also comes with no crapware or bloatware what so ever so no Norton Internet Security, ‘no antivirus or useless webcam programs. It is all good quality programs are there plus some luxury too. ‘Bootcamp’ software comes installed which makes a Mac the only machine that can legally allows you to run Windows, Linux and OS X on a machine.

Ports – As far as ports are concerned there are a measly two USB ports which is rather disappointing, a Magsafe (power) port an Ethernet port, FireWire, mini DisplayPort, an SD card slot and a combined headphone/microphone jack, it also has a CD drive and on the right side and it has a power indicator button on the left side to check how much power you have without firing up the whole system. Bluetooth and Wifi are here too obviously.

Battery – This was by far the biggest disappointment out of the whole system. Firstly, it is non-user-replaceable meaning I can’t carry a spare with me and pop it in – well I could if I carried around a screwdriver and unscrewed ten screws and violated my warranty each time I wanted to replace the battery. Also, the 7 hours claimed life…not true. I have got 3.5 hours with Wifi on and no video playing and 5 hours with no video and no Wifi. To get 7 hours you’d probably need to turn down the screen brightness to the minimum level, have one application running with no background apps, no video, no CD in the drive and have the keyboard brightness turned fully down. It also claims that you will get 3 years of the battery with 1000 recharges no available. That is assuming you only recharge once a day. Having owned this Mac for about 2 months and a week, it is shocking to see that I have gone through 95 recharge cycles already. Almost 10% of my battery in 2 months!? Soon I will start losing hours of battery and I can already tell that 18 months from now I will be 80% of the way to those cycles. The only way to get a new battery is to buy one at the Apple Store unless it loses a lot of power in under a year where Apple Care will cover it during the first year in any Apple store.

Just a final note on the battery, if I leave the Mac in sleep mode it will lose about 8% of it’s battery overnight, when it shut down completely it can lose as much as 20% of it’s battery in 8 hours which I think is unacceptable.

However, despite the battery this laptop is by far the best ever as it is a small price to pay for what you truly get. (I haven’t even gone into the amazing processing power it has and the amazing 1066Mhz DDR3!!! Ram which nearly no other manufacturer offers and especially not at this low, low price. This will be the best £900 you’ll ever spend (do upgrade to 4GB and a 250GB HDD if you can afford to though)

Rating: 4 / 5

Ali Weir

at 2:29 am

Like most people here, I made the big leap from PC to Mac. To everyone reading these reviews who are contemplating it…Just do it! They’re actually not a lot different from a PC in most ways, just a LOT better and surprisingly easy to use.

~ MacBook:

Apple want you to enjoy your product right from the start. So before tearing all the packaging off, take a moment to just look at how they’ve done it. Once your mac is out in the open, admire it for a second. It’s a lot more aesthetically pleasing then your average laptop, with smooth casing, everything very minimal and compact. The all-in-one aluminium casing tops the whole thing off to a tee. The keyboard is revolutionary in its design, again being very easy on the eye with its adequate spacing between the keys, making it a lot easier to type. Another plus on the keyboard is the backlight, very useful when using in lowlight conditions. The screen again is the sharpest yet which makes a huge difference whether it be DVDs or general use. Makes everything on the screen look 10x better then a PC screen. On the screen is a built in camera (iSight) meaning no splashing out on a webcam. Can be used for general camera, webcam and is the sensor for the backlight keyboard and screen brightness. Those clever people at Apple have come up with an amazing glass trackpad. So smooth when gliding over it with your fingers, and so big as well. Also can be used for magnification, twisting, bring up applications and scrolling up/down and left/right web pages. The bods at Apple are all about the minimalistic approach to their products, so no CD Drive popping out (juts a slit to put it in) a headphone AND microphone plug in one, no visible cooling vents or speakers. Unfortunately, with this frame of mind they’ve cut down on the input ports. For instance, no HDMI port. Therefore if you require it, you have to buy an adapter. Everything on this has been thought about carefully, not just shodily thrown together. Example like the charger lead is magnetic into the MacBook, hence if trip over it, it just pops out. No harm done. So simple yet so effective.

~ Operating System/Software:

All new Macs come with the new OS: Snow Leopard. With this being my first Mac, I’m unable to compare it with the older versions. But I have to say it is pretty amazing compared to Windows. To start with everything just looks a lot better, smoother and more polished. A lot faster to, 10 secs maybe to start up, while about 2 secs to shut down. Click on an icon and it will come up immediately as well as l lot of things are easier to find and more compact overall. It is also deathly quiet at all times. Only time it starts whirring is when a DVD is being read, once being played it will shut up again. Also comes built in with iTunes and Safari (which are pretty self explanatory) It’s these little things make the whole Mac experience more enjoyable. Blue Tooth is also amazingly built it, so no cables or leads between phone to laptop.

The MacBook comes with built in iLife. An interesting little package of GarageBand, iDVD, iMovie, iWeb and iPhoto. In the months that I’ve had my MacBook, I’ve only ever used iPhoto (which is actually a good and useful piece of software) and GarageBand (which I’ve only ever used just playing around when I’ve got a minute here or there). Unfortunately I have no intention of using the others which is a shame. iWorks is available for the peeps that want Word, Excell and Powerpoint. I personally don’t really see the need as the MacBook comes with Text Editor (a basic Word). So unless it’s really needed, then don’t bother. A worry that I had was about opening and transferring files from Windows to Mac (ie Word doc. to a Mac). But they’ve even thought of that, with the MacBook capable of opening Word doc./docx. files in Text Edit.

Now, those big wigs over in the US of A have cleverly come up with a way to install Windows on a Mac! This is where Boot Camp comes into play. A clever little bit of software that lets you install your own version of Windows alongside OS Snow Leopard. Choose how much diskspace you wish for it to take up, then when starting up decide which OS to go with and bobs your uncle. This has the benefits of if you decide to install Microsoft Office having Word, downloading and opening programmes (ie MSN and the like) and various other tasks that are just a pain in arse to try and do in SL.

I honestly can’t praise this machine enough, it looks beautiful, acts super-fast with an intelligent OS System, and most importantly is a joy to work with.

Once you’ve gone Mac, you’ll never go back!
Rating: 5 / 5